


fond and foolish

by amazonqueen



Series: these foolish feelings [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Photographer, Angst, Angst and Feels, Cigarettes, Established Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan, Established Relationship, Female Hong Jisoo | Joshua, Friends With Benefits, Genderbending, Homophobia, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, LLF Comment Project, M/M, Model Yoon Jeonghan, Photographer Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups, Smoking, jeonghan has an implied bad relationship with food, this is not a happy fic!!!, yep josh's a girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 11:45:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13523580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazonqueen/pseuds/amazonqueen
Summary: Jeonghan starved himself of food and Seungcheol starved himself of love, and it all went around.orjeongcheol friends with benefits photographer/model AU that involves copious amounts of angst





	fond and foolish

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from the salman rushdie novel 'the golden house'
> 
> happy birthday chris! this one's for you c:

Choi Seungcheol was twenty-five, a few years out of university and tired as all hell.

Not that he was complaining, not after everything; being a photographer was his dream job, was everything he’d fought his parents and clawed through school for, was what he’d spent all those late nights crying and sweating and spilling ramen on himself at 3 am for. Photography was capturing a moment forever, as cheesy as that sounded (Seungcheol didn’t admit it often, but he was a cheesy guy), a way to keep something perfect in some form. A way to remember, years later, exactly how your brother scrunched his nose, or that old tree had looked in the rain before it was hit by lightning, or what your best friend had looked like that one night they had paused under the streetlight and looked back at you and for just one moment you could almost let yourself fall in love with them.

Point was, Choi Seungcheol loved his job. He just loved it some days more than others.

Seungcheol alighted from the bus and padded into the coffee shop down the street from his apartment. He forced a weak smile at the barista ( _god,_ he needed caffeine) and a few minutes later he was out and holding a nice cup of what was pretty much caffeine water.

Just what he needed. He had photos to edit from the shoot and not enough hours in the day to do it.

Seungcheol did the old juggling trick for a moment (which did he want to drop less, keys or coffee) before letting himself into his apartment. When he did, the first thing he saw was one Yoon Jeonghan, laid out on the couch in a white t-shirt and sweatpants like some old college roommate and not like he was the hottest model this side of the Pacific.

(He meant hot in _all_ the ways.)

Although to be fair, Jeonghan was both, at least in this apartment, and more often the former than the latter.

“Cheollie,” Jeonghan said, eyes focused on whatever app he was messing around with on his phone.

“Jeonghan,” Seungcheol sighed, and set his bag down by the kitchen counter, dropping his keys into his little bowl of miscellaneous important things.

(He didn’t really need it since it was just keys and change, but it made him feel like an Adult.)

“What are you doing here?”

Jeonghan’s eyes flicked up to meet his and Seungcheol’s heart flipped in his chest and he remembered all over again why he’d ended up in this situation anyway.

He and Jeonghan had been college roommates, way back when Jeonghan was studying art history and had his beautiful eyes set on museum curation and Seungcheol had had really fucking terrible hair and a camera the size of his face. Seungcheol was gay and knew it, and had made it pretty obvious from the beginning that this roommate thing wasn’t going to work out if Jeonghan wasn’t okay with that.

Evidently, Jeonghan had been, or they wouldn’t be here today.

Eventually, Jeonghan would be more than okay with that.

(Not that either of them was _okay_ ; all they did was pretend everything was fine and then pounce on each other, circle like wary wolves for a little afterward and then start all over again. They weren’t okay. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t normal. Seungcheol always had to tell himself that. Jeonghan had a way of making anything seem normal, and so did the passing of time.)

“I think you gave up the right to pretend it’s a surprise to see me here after you gave me a key, Cheol,” Jeonghan replied, voice that same heady mix of soft and fond and snarky at the same time, one that he had been using on Seungcheol since they had first met, with great effectiveness.

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Seungcheol asked lightly, opening his fridge and peering inside as if the contents would be any different from what they had been this morning; soju and yogurt and various miscellaneous foods but mostly empty.

“I seem to recall someone grabbing my spare key and claiming it as their own,” he continued.

Jeonghan turned off his phone and set it on his thighs. “Sounds like a bad person,” Jeonghan replied, voice as light as Seungcheol’s had been before. “You should probably get rid of them.”

“Yeah,” Seungcheol said, closing the fridge door, eyes skittering up to his cupboards, his back towards Jeonghan. “I probably should.”

His voice had skimmed too close to the wrong side of serious, so he plastered a smile on his face and turned around to change the subject.

“How was your shoot?” Seungcheol asked, grabbing his favourite dinner (instant noodles for the win) and readying the boiling water.

Jeonghan’s nose did that thing where it scrunched up and then relaxed. “Fine,” he said shortly. “Photographer was...” Jeonghan’s voice trailed off and Seungcheol could guess how that sentence ended already.

“Handsy?” He asked, voice careful, airy, as if this was the kind of question people asked all the time, as if this was the sort of thing that went on in every other apartment in this building, in 2B next door with the young married couple and their newborn baby, in 2D on the other side with the two young lovebirds that insisted on the stupidest nicknames. As if those other young, financially strapped twenty-somethings delicately posed questions about sexual harassment as if it were a landmine.

It felt like the building was filled with happy, normal couples and Seungcheol couldn’t even pull off happy. Or normal.

Most days, Seungcheol tried not to think about it. Today, he couldn’t.

Jeonghan hummed in response and didn’t say anything, which said more than enough.

Seungcheol sighed, and let the topic drop. The worst part of this conversation was always that neither of them could do anything about it.

“Yours?”

“Fine,” Seungcheol echoed. “I mean, personally, the clothes weren’t that great, but who am I to judge the client, right?”

Jeonghan actually knew, in the way fashion people did, when clothes were ‘good’ or bad, so this caught his attention. “Can I see?”

“You know you can’t,” Seungcheol replied, watching his noodles cook in a sort of dispassionate way. “That’d be a terrible violation of --”

“What?” Jeonghan asked, challenging, eyes flashing in that way they did when he was interested and engaged and trying to make Seungcheol’s life ten times harder. “Some secret photographer’s code of conduct?”

“The contract,” Seungcheol finished. “I was going to say the contract.”

Jeonghan’s eyes were lingering on Seungcheol’s instant noodles in the way that people did when they wanted your food, that hot, deep want that Seungcheol was familiar with. Seungcheol knew better than to offer. That was a one-way ticket to Jeonghan complaining about his latest diet when he was already stick-thin, or Jeonghan saying that he really shouldn’t because of whatever weight he was at now. It was either complaints or self-hatred, and Seungcheol hated them both.

It was going to be a long night.

Jeonghan pouted, then let the issue of the photos go.

(They were both good at that, weren’t they? Prodding once, twice, and then dropping it right as they were on the precipice of something; danger, awkwardness. Honesty.)

“Really, though,” Seungcheol said, chopsticks pulling up strands of noodles. “Why are you here?”

Unsaid; _it’s not like you don’t have your own apartment to go to._ And behind that, _why would you want to be here with me, when you have nicer things and live in a nicer building and associate with nicer people._

Which really came back to Seungcheol himself, and his self-hatred. He was getting ahead in his career, true, shooting for fashion brands and magazines, but he wasn’t Jeonghan. In fashion photography, your career trajectory was like most others; the older you got, the further you were in your career.

Jeonghan was a model, which meant that he was peaking. And of course Seungcheol knew it was silly to compare their careers, but nobody could stop him from doing it. Jeonghan had always been just a shade too good for him anyway. He’d known it since day one, when Jeonghan had walked into their dorm with his old long hair, brown and layered, with perfect skin and the ability to pronounce painters’ names correctly.

(And here he was now anyway; letting Jeonghan get away with what he wanted, letting himself be used over and over again and left behind like it all never happened. As if every time they fell together could be negated with a ‘no homo’ and left at that.)

“It gets lonely in big apartments, you know,” Jeonghan said. “Especially if you live by yourself.”

_Lonely._

In his head, Seungcheol was already telling himself to stop.

“Yeah?” his traitorous mouth said instead of something more reasonable, something more in keeping with their supposedly purely platonic relationship; something like _I know this girl I can set you up with_ or _maybe you should go out and find someone_ or even just _get out._

“What kind of lonely?”

Jeonghan had slid off the couch and put his phone in his pocket, dark eyes fixed on Seungcheol’s own with a look that Seungcheol wanted to pretend he couldn’t read.

“Cold,” Jeonghan said, still as light as ever. “Can’t take up all that space by myself, you know?”

Jeonghan was coming around the counter now. Seungcheol turned so his back was to the counter, instant noodles abandoned, steam still curling gently off the top. “Hm?” Seungcheol said eloquently. “I wouldn’t know, you spend so much time here that you’re practically a roommate --”

And the inevitable happened; mouth crashed on mouth, Jeonghan’s arms on either side of Seungcheol, and the two of them fell back into the same old pattern as always.

(Seungcheol was a vinyl record stuck on repeat and taking Jeonghan down with him, spinning and spinning and never making it out.)

* * *

By the next morning, Seungcheol was in the depths of self-hatred.

His phone blared an almost accusatory 10 am at him, telling him that not only had he wasted two hours of productivity (he was generally up at eight on weekends when he had something he absolutely needed to get done) on something as unnecessary as _sleep_ , just looking over his shoulder would probably reveal a still-sleeping Jeonghan, angelic and beautiful and not-his never-his, untouchable (but that wasn’t what had happened last night).

Jeonghan could never be his because Jeonghan was – what was Jeonghan?

It didn’t matter. Jeonghan was straight or closeted or whatever the fuck else but to the outside world he was straight. In their world, in entertainment of any kind, wasn’t that really all that mattered?

Rule number one of gayness was not to fall in love with a straight. But the law of gayness was also that everyone falls for a straight at least once. Whatever Jeonghan was (closeted, beautiful, cruel), to the world he was straight, and if Seungcheol was lucky he could just count Jeonghan as his one straight and hopefully never fall for one again.

Except he was already in too deep, and Seungcheol couldn’t extricate himself from this mess. Not now.

If an average mess was letting your lasagna splatter all over your kitchen floor, Seungcheol was in such a mess that he was more accurately lasagna splattered on the floor, the walls, and himself rolling in what was on the floor.

That was how much of a mess he was in. Extracting himself from this tangled web would be about as easy as cleaning the floors and walls and getting rid of that lasagna smell. Seungcheol could remove all visible evidence of Jeonghan and that smell would still linger; his shampoo, his cologne, his laundry detergent. His laugh would still echo down the hallways, his favourite TV shows still the first thing to show up on Seungcheol’s Netflix, his weird rabbit diet foods hidden in the back of his fridge or in some cupboard Seungcheol never opened.

Jeonghan permeated the air and reminders of him hid in the corners of Seungcheol’s apartment. Seungcheol couldn’t get rid of him if he tried.

(And he never really did.)

He looked back over his shoulder at a still-sleeping Jeonghan, features smoothed out in sleep. It was hard to imagine that this was the same man who had gotten shitfaced drunk so many times in university, who made a living off walking in a straight line and eye-fucking cameras, who kissed and slept with him and then left. No homo, or anything.

His hands were itching to strangle something suddenly, so Seungcheol grabbed his phone and rolled out of bed.

Breakfast. He should make breakfast. Seungcheol padded off to the kitchen and stood there for a long while, almost unable to move, looking at and almost through the kitchen cupboards, stood there until his sockless feet started to go numb from the cold tiles of his kitchen floor, until he could feel the cold spreading through his entire body, like his soul was slowly being frozen.

He stood there until Jeonghan came up behind him and said, “Idiot,” with all the affection one person could possibly inject into what was ostensibly an insult. “Why didn’t you put your socks on? You’re going to get sick.”

(And in that moment, Seungcheol could almost pretend Jeonghan cared.)

Seungcheol blinked, made his mouth turn into a pretense of a smile, and said, “I’ll go put them on. You start breakfast,” and dodged around Jeonghan before he could make eye contact with the man. Days like these, it hurt more to look at him than not to.

He should stop. He should leave. They couldn’t keep on like this. Seungcheol couldn’t take it, couldn’t take the heat and the passion and the night and then have Jeonghan turn around and say “No homo, right?”, have Jeonghan pretend they were just friends as if friends slept in the same bed and kissed each other against kitchen counters and bathroom doors and extricated little whimpers and groans from each other, as if friends did any of this. Seungcheol knew it was a promise he wouldn’t keep but he made it to himself anyway; there would be no next time.

Then Jeonghan said, “Pancakes or waffles?” with that light, laughing voice, and Seungcheol turned around and went right back.

(There would be no next time, so he had to keep it while he still could.)

* * *

“Just pick, Jihoon,” Seungcheol said, amused, watching his dark-haired, much shorter friend scrutinize a coffee shop menu as if it was of national importance.

“I’m trying to,” Jihoon snapped back, and Seungcheol huffed out a laugh and put his hands in his jean pockets, leaning back on his heels. Music producer Jihoon got crocodile level snappy when it came to caffeine; the man was both addicted to coffee and something of a connoisseur at the same time, which was inconvenient at three in the morning when you were beyond tired and merely looking for caffeine. Jihoon created trouble for himself, honestly.

“Vanilla mocha for me and some sort of fancy coffee thing for him,” Seungcheol finally said, smiling at the cashier as if to say _my friend is so weird and pretentiously hipster_. Jihoon almost squawked in indignation, corrected him with a string of foreign syllables that Seungcheol didn’t bother interpreting, and then settled, following Seungcheol to the pickup line and then to a table by the window.

“How have things been going? Been awhile since you left your music cave,” Seungcheol said, watching the steam curl off his coffee.

“Studio,” Jihoon corrected lazily. “And it’s been pretty good, I’ve just had to finish up some songs for this new group’s album and their company is so fucking _picky_ , you would not believe --” Jihoon trails off, huffs in frustration, runs a hand through his hair. “Pretty sure I can’t even talk about it. You know how entertainment companies are.”

Seungcheol nodded as if he did when really he had never dealt with the multi-headed beast that was the Korean music industry. Fashion, sure. General celebrities, of course. There were famous models. But idols and actors were a different thing entirely, and both of them knew that what Jihoon dealt with was something akin to but vastly different from the vagaries of contracts and models and agencies that Seungcheol dealt with.

“How do you even have the time to date someone?” Seungcheol asked, sipping cautiously from his coffee. When he genuinely needed it and the kick it brought, he couldn’t care less if it scalded his tongue; what he needed was the caffeine, and damn the consequences. But in those rare in-between moments when he didn’t have to get something done and was merely drinking coffee for pleasure and enjoyment, he could appreciate it, and it was hard to appreciate eating or drinking if your tongue was burnt.

Jihoon did a little smile smirk thing in that way he did when he was praised but had enough tact to pretend at humility.

“It’s easier when they’re in the industry,” Jihoon replied, sipping from his own coffee. “Soonyoung disappears into studios too. He understands.”

“And nobody cares, huh?” Seungcheol replied.

“Not really,” Jihoon said, eyebrows scrunching up a little. “We’re behind the scenes people, so. It doesn’t matter. What the public doesn’t know won’t hurt them. Whether or not their hit songs are written and composed by a gay guy doesn’t matter to them until it comes out.”

“Until?”

“If,” Jihoon amended. “With this many idols, I don’t think the tabloids need to be chasing after producers’ personal lives.”

Seungcheol’s mouth quirked up, but he wasn’t really thinking about Jihoon and his almost-rant about the idol industry’s supersaturation. Jihoon and Soonyoung could be together without much worry because Jihoon didn’t sing songs, he wrote them. And Soonyoung didn’t perform dances for screaming fans, he just made them. A choreographer and a producer. Like Jihoon had said, two behind the scenes people.

Nobody cared. The public had no right to their lives.

He was squeezing his cup a little too hard and Jihoon was noticing, so Seungcheol pushed Jeonghan and entertainment industries and everything else out of his mind.

(Jeonghan’s life was public property.)

“Does listening to me talk about the industry really bother you that much?” Jihoon asked, and Seungcheol laughed.

“I think I’ve memorized it by now,” he teased. “Every year the number of idols in the industry increases,” Seungcheol parroted. “Most of them are from small companies and never get noticed, but there are still new ones every year. Idol groups can’t get noticed, not unless they’re from the big three, blah, blah, blah.”

Jihoon’s emotions battled themselves out on his face for an instant; amusement with annoyance, probably a desire to just punch Seungcheol in the face somewhere in there too. It was all good; the two of them had been friends for a while; since first year of university, when they’d shared an early morning music class and both of them had often shown up in giant hoodies and sweatpants, to the point of becoming fashion twins. He was used to Jihoon’s ways.

“Shut up,” Jihoon finally grumbled, and Seungcheol laughed again.

“You should date someone,” Jihoon said, grasping onto a new subject. Seungcheol’s laugh died in his throat.

“What?” he said eloquently. “You should date someone,” Jihoon repeated. “Nobody cares if you date a guy. You’re just a photographer.”

Seungcheol took a hearty sip of his coffee to avoid talking and nearly regretted it. “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Maybe I just don’t want to.”

Jihoon locked a penetrating gaze on Seungcheol. “Are you still hung up over Jeonghan?” Jihoon asked sharply. Seungcheol’s mouth opened, closed. “I can’t believe you,” Jihoon said, more to himself than to Seungcheol, somehow managing to make sipping from coffee look passive-aggressive.

“What do you mean?” Seungcheol asked, deliberately oblivious.

“How many years has it been?” Jihoon bit out. “You two have always been --” Jihoon waved his hand in a little, compact motion that Seungcheol took to mean ‘close’, “but that doesn’t mean you have to pine after him all the time. You’re twenty-five, Seungcheol. University ended a long time ago.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Seungcheol replied. “I’m perfectly aware of my age. And when I graduated.”

Jihoon did the hand-through-hair in frustration again. “Congratulations,” Jihoon bit out sarcastically. “But that’s not what I meant and you know it. Maybe it was okay for you two to fool around in university but think about it, Seungcheol. We don’t even know what Jeonghan is, what kind of person he likes. Half the time I think he doesn’t either. He’s either a very, _very_ messed-up straight guy or so deeply in the closet he’s practically in Narnia, and either way, it’s not going to turn out well for you. It already isn’t.”

Jeonghan didn’t want people to know, and Seungcheol had stopped questioning it a long time ago. Still, that didn’t mean Jihoon didn’t know. Jihoon was Seungcheol’s best friend, one of their classmates from university. Besides, Jihoon spent a lot of time with them, and he wasn’t stupid. If Seungcheol hadn’t said it, Jihoon would have seen it.

( _Don’t ask and I won’t tell_ , but Jihoon hadn’t asked and Seungcheol had told anyway, young and full of emotions, looking for an outlet.)

“Don’t mess with straight guys, Seungcheol,” Jihoon said, staring Seungcheol straight in the eye.

“What if he’s not?” Seungcheol asked.

“Does it really matter?” Jihoon said, eyes driving and hard. “Because right now, there doesn’t look like much of a difference. To me, to you, and to the rest of the world. You need to move on, Seungcheol. There are better people to do.”

“Things?”

“People,” Jihoon affirmed.

Seungcheol sighed. “Honestly, I know I should end it,” he admitted. “But he’s so tangled up in my life, I can’t even see a way out. Maybe I used to think I could change him. I’m going to end it though. I’m going to.”

Jihoon looked at Seungcheol for a long moment, then sipped quietly from his coffee.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Seungcheol said quietly, and Jihoon looked at him with his head tilted ever so slightly for another long moment, and then glanced down. Pursed lips – quiet acquiescence.

“How’s your work?” Jihoon asked, and Seungcheol smiled and tried to think of cameras instead of dewy eyes, editing software instead of delicate hands, pushy clients instead of soft hair.

“Fine,” Seungcheol said. “It’s fine.”

* * *

**jeonghan** : wanna come to mine?

The man slid into his text messages like nothing had happened. Seungcheol sat at his desk and looked at his phone for a long, long moment.

Was this a booty call?

(And what would he do if it was? Ignore it? Go over to his house and say _no, it’s over, I don’t want to live like this anymore_? As if. Seungcheol had never been able to say no to Jeonghan, and he probably wasn’t about to start now.)

He hesitated, then tapped out a response.

 **Seungcheol:** what for?

Knowing phone-addicted Jeonghan, it wouldn’t take long for a response. Seungcheol set his phone down, zoomed in on the photo he was editing, and got back to work. Jeonghan might have time to laze around in a beautiful penthouse, but he didn’t.

 **Jeonghan:** movies?

Uncharacteristically uncertain. Seungcheol glanced back at his still-incomplete photo and then back at his phone and the promise of just plain _fun_ ; no mental gymnastics to justify what he was doing, no self-hatred for not breaking it off again, no worry, no doubt. Just movies and takeout and Jeonghan, like the old days.

 **Jeonghan:** i have popcorn and a stack of ur favourite trashy romcoms

Seungcheol smiled.

 **Seungcheol:** say no more

Twenty minutes later, Seungcheol had arrived at Jeonghan’s upscale apartment building with nothing more than a coat and his phone.

(He wasn’t planning on staying the night. Whether or not his plans would fall through was a different story.)

He pressed the buzzer and leaned against it under the awning, let his eyes flutter shut and listened to the sound of rain pattering on the ground, his heartbeat, his breathing. Jeonghan’s voice came through, not crackly like it was at his own apartment but crisp and clear.

(Of course fancy apartments brought fancy technology.)

“Who is it?”

“Seungcheol.”

“Come on up.”

The doors unlocked and Seungcheol walked in as if he had been here a million times. Jeonghan usually came to his place, when they met up – Jeonghan seemed to find a strange sort of familiarity and comfort in the small spaces, the slightly dirty counters, the perpetually understocked fridge. Seungcheol’s apartment felt like college, felt like youth, felt like normalcy. Jeonghan lived the way a supermodel should, in some high penthouse in Gangnam away from the rest of Seoul, but apparently Seungcheol’s apartment felt comfortable.

But that didn’t mean Seungcheol had never been here; they were still friends before they were fuck buddies or whatever the hell this was.

Jeonghan’s apartment was clean; almost alarmingly so. The entire place seemed to stand in stark contrast to Seungcheol’s, as if he needed another reminder about the lives the two of them led. Jeonghan’s counters were clean, clear granite, his fridge had an ice-maker, his sofa was real leather. And that wasn’t even getting into the square footage of the place.

If Seungcheol hadn’t known just how vast the difference was between their bank account balances, he knew now.

“Jeonghan?” he said, and his friend poked his head out from the kitchen, where the sound of microwave popcorn bursting into glorious buttery, fatty softness could be heard. “Here!” Jeonghan said, smiling as if they were kids in school all over again. Attendance wasn’t a thing that had been taken for a long time in Seungcheol’s life.

That was some kind of nostalgia, the pang in his chest, the sudden longing for that new binder smell, fresh highlighters, gel pens. Seungcheol had always been the kind to start off motivated and have meticulously organized notes and then devolve into a system that was still some semblance of organized but was definitely more madness than method.

Jeonghan, on the other hand, had never even made that attempt at organization. Seungcheol had clear memories of Jeonghan’s desk in their dorm room being strewn with papers and binders and empty coffee cups. The notes on Jeonghan’s desk were always taken in messy handwriting and light pencil that smudged easily.

But those bad habits wouldn’t be visible looking around this apartment. It was barely lived in in some areas and conspicuously lived in in others; Jeonghan’s living room had a couch that definitely had butt dents, a TV on a table with remotes scattered around it, a blanket tossed over the arm of the couch, a little coffee table with some empty dishes that most definitely had _not_ had Jeonghan’s diet food or rabbit salads in them.

(Seungcheol had lived off instant noodles before, still did sometimes; he could _see_ when someone else was doing the same.)

“Making popcorn?” Seungcheol tossed over his shoulder, eyes slowly dragging over the walls and furniture of Jeonghan’s living room as if he had never been here before. He picked up a picture frame from college graduation, put it back down.

(Him and Jeonghan and Jihoon and another classmate, all with smiles almost as big as their faces, as if they were excited to be graduating and it didn’t feel like they were being boiled alive in their graduation clothes.)

“No, it’s just some other food that pops in the microwave and smells like butter,” Jeonghan deadpanned. “Yes, I’m making popcorn. How can you have movie night without popcorn?”

Seungcheol considered bringing up the diet thing but refrained. This was too college-like to pass up, and to bring up any circumstances that were too closely tied to their current adult lives would shatter the illusion.

Everyone had that bit of college nostalgia that lived in some deep compartment of their heart, right? Seungcheol was no exception.

“You can’t,” Seungcheol conceded. “Oh how wise you are, Jeonghan, how could us mere mortals ever live without your wisdom,” he continued, voice teasing, back still to his friend as he dragged his fingertips down the spines of Jeonghan’s DVD collection. All the favourites were there; 100 Days with Mr. Arrogant, Someone Special, Cyrano Agency, 200 Pounds Beauty, My Tutor Friend _and_ its sequel.

“Why do you even have all of these?” Seungcheol asked, a slight laugh leaving his mouth as he turned to make eye contact with Jeonghan, carrying a big bowl of fresh popcorn.

Jeonghan set the bowl of popcorn down on the coffee table, shrugged. “I guess they’re just leftovers from college.”

That didn’t quite make sense, since these were all romcoms that Seungcheol enjoyed to an embarrassing degree (like Jeonghan had said once, they were all the same plot anyway), but Seungcheol left it at that. He didn’t know if he still had his stack of these romcoms; maybe when they’d moved out of the dorm Jeonghan had taken them in that self-assured way of his and claimed them as his own. Seungcheol wouldn’t be surprised if Jeonghan secretly liked the movies too, and less surprised if Jeonghan genuinely had taken them from him – Jeonghan seemed to function under the assumption that everything was his, and he wasn’t quite wrong.

Seungcheol let the issue drop and replaced 100 Days with Mr. Arrogant on the stack.

“Which one do you want to watch first?” he asked, moving the stack to the coffee table and fanning them out like a winning hand of cards.

“You can pick,” Jeonghan said generously, and set to fluffing up pillows in preparation for a long night of wasting time on Korean romantic comedies from the 2000s.

“Cyrano Agency,” Seungcheol said, plucking the DVD from the winning hand. “It’s a classic,” he said in response to Jeonghan’s raised eyebrows. “Okay,” Jeonghan replied, strangely acquiescent, and let Seungcheol busy himself with the TV and DVD player as Jeonghan did some quick calculations in his head on just how much sofa space he could occupy without repercussions.

Seungcheol could practically hear Jeonghan decide that he could take up almost the entire thing and get away with it, easy.

Seungcheol grabbed what he hoped was the right remote and threw himself onto the couch without looking.

Rather predictably, he impaled himself on Jeonghan’s foot.

“God, Jeonghan,” he groaned, and Jeonghan replied cheekily, “Flattering, but I’m only human, Cheollie. Not God. Not even an angel.”

For a moment, all Seungcheol could say was, “Lord do I know it.”

Then, latching onto something more teasing and fun and less serious, “You know that thing you always say about how you wouldn’t be convicted of murder if you showed the jury all the puns I made?” Seungcheol asked.

“Yes, and I stand by it completely,” Jeonghan replied.

“If _I_ showed that jury all the things you’ve stolen and the jokes you’ve made they wouldn’t convict me, they’d get me a medal of honour.”

Jeonghan laughed, and it echoed through all the hallways of his vast apartment. “What have I stolen that wasn’t mine to begin with?” Jeonghan asked.

( _My heart,_ but then again, hadn’t it been Jeonghan’s to begin with? _)_

“You stole my food from the mini-fridge all the time in college,” Seungcheol complained, jabbing his elbow at Jeonghan’s foot until it retracted and made more space for Seungcheol to mansprawl properly on the couch.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jeonghan said loftily. “Mini-fridge? What mini-fridge?” It was this absurdity that made Seungcheol laugh. “You’re incorrigible,” he finally said, and pointed the remote at the television.

“And you love it,” replied Jeonghan, and then Cyrano Agency came on and they both stopped talking.

(God though, he did.)

* * *

Seungcheol ended up staying the night.

They slept together but they didn’t _sleep_ together, in the way that two friends can.

(Because that was what they were, right? Friends. That was all.)

Seungcheol hadn’t meant to stay the night, had promised himself that he wouldn’t before he went. But Seungcheol seemed to deal increasingly in broken promises these days, stacking up like the unread books on his bedside table. He had borrowed clothes off of Jeonghan, who was a model with all the physique and height of one, but Seungcheol was about as tall as Jeonghan and starving as a sort of constant state of being, and Jeonghan had sweatpants and shirts from university that fit Seungcheol.

Point was, Seungcheol ended up awake at 4 am in Jeonghan’s impossibly high thread count sheets and on his memory foam pillows, listening to the rain outside coalesce into a storm, as if it was trying to shake the whole apartment building down until it collapsed on the street outside, laying waste to this part of the vast metropolis that was Seoul.

It felt like divine retribution, and even though Seungcheol technically hadn’t given in this time (because Jeonghan hadn’t made a move; if he had, Seungcheol would have melted right away and he knew it), he still felt guilty. He felt it in his stomach and his throat, clawing its way out of his mouth.

The next morning, they laughed and ate and made fun of the characters from the movies they watched, and Seungcheol could almost pretend the guilt was squashed down under the coffee and pastries, back down into his stomach, as if he could digest it.

That night there had been a thunderstorm, but when Seungcheol stepped out of the building that day to take the bus home, the sun was out.

(He didn’t realize until later that he had forgotten to give the clothes back.)

* * *

Seungcheol and Jeonghan were on a public bus, rattling their way to Jeonghan’s apartment.

Seungcheol had gone to Jeonghan’s place, ostensibly just to give the clothes back, but then Jeonghan said they should go out and have some fun for once, do whatever normal twenty-somethings do when they have a night off.

(Seungcheol did not point out that they were technically both freelancers and every night could be a night off.)

They had ended up at the night markets instead of a bar (neither Seungcheol nor Jeonghan could afford to imbibe overpriced cocktails; Seungcheol because he literally could not afford it, Jeonghan because alcohol was fattening), skittering around like a teenage couple new to everything, pointing at trinkets and street food and people.

It was invigorating, it was nostalgic, it was brilliant and beautiful and oh so brief, because Seungcheol knew as well as Jeonghan did that this was exactly the kind of thing couples do. And they were not a couple. They were just friends, and old university roommates, and fuckbuddies. It was a tangled web that Seungcheol had never asked for but had anyway, and he made the best of it.

( _Just get it over with and end it_ , but he couldn’t make his mouth form the words and pop this bubble.)

Seungcheol had poked and prodded and wheedled Jeonghan down until he gave in and got _soondae,_ blood sausages, off an _ajumma_ with a toothy smile. They had been hot and juicy and Seungcheol had revelled in it as they wandered around the streets, and when they had polished it off Seungcheol had grabbed some dried octopus; Seungcheol preferred them spicy, Jeonghan did not.

He had known this before Jeonghan said a word, and maybe it was sad but Seungcheol could justify that in his mind, could say it was years of friendship and cohabitation that had provided that knowledge.

He didn’t even know who he was trying to fool at this point.

They had spent a long while down at the night markets, hands close but never meeting, never crossing those final few breaths of space to close in on each other, two ships passing in the night but on purpose. These two ships didn’t want to crash. These two ships each thought of the other as the iceberg that would sink it, that would wreck it, that would leave it and its blood smeared through history, a reminder, a legend; learn your lessons, listen to others, think of the children, think of the public.

 _Your love is not your own,_ the lesson those two ships would teach if they collided.

And so they didn’t.

Seungcheol and Jeonghan were the Titanic and the iceberg, but which was which was up for grabs.

They each thought of the other as dangerous, not to be touched. Not in public, anyways. Unknown elements. Terrifying, violent, powerful. All that tension, all those heavy unsaids simmered away until they were behind closed doors, be those a bathroom or an apartment.

Then, like a lion set into the Coliseum, it broke loose. It wrecked them for a night in those confines, and they forgot it. Like it had never appeared. Like the lion was a ghost, maybe something hinted at, glanced at obliquely, but never said. To say it, to acknowledge it, would make it real.

Nights like these, though, Seungcheol felt that impossible dream, of that lion becoming real. On the bus at some dark hour of the night, nobody cared about anybody else. It would be so easy to yawn a little, stretch his arms out, leave one draped over Jeonghan. To drop his weary head on the other man’s shoulder.

It wasn’t that much space, and yet, it was a gaping chasm, an abyss that he could tumble into. Seungcheol spent so much mental energy, worked so hard, to keep his expectations low. To keep himself in check, to make sure he didn’t run off with visions of a future that wasn’t going to happen.

(If Jeonghan had wanted this to be a _thing_ , it would have happened long before now. For the longest time, he’d let himself be content with scraps, happy to even be able to pretend they were in a relationship. Should he want more? Who was to say he deserved a full meal? Jeonghan starved himself of food and Seungcheol starved himself of love, and it all went around.)

But it was so late. He was so tired. It had been a long day.

He still couldn’t make himself do it, but they were getting closer to their stop and Jeonghan’s long lashes were fluttering shut every once in awhile, butterfly wings sweeping his cheekbones.

Seungcheol felt his mouth twist and then it was their stop and he stopped too, stood and walked with Jeonghan off the bus and into the night.

* * *

It was a shipwreck as soon as they got into Jeonghan’s apartment. The door closed behind him, shoes were shucked off, and then his back was against the hard door, mouth on mouth.

(There is no alternate history where the Titanic does not hit the iceberg. It always does. It has to. They are oppositely charged objects, dragged by the force of attraction towards each other. The Titanic and the iceberg come back to each other, time after time. The Titanic crashes over and over and says it will do something differently but never does. It sees the iceberg and sails right at it, all the while saying, “It will be different this time. We won’t crash.” It always does.)

Jeonghan was tall and lean and warm, pressing against him, desperate. There was something in that warm pressure, something other than physical desperation, that Seungcheol could feel but couldn’t name. He didn’t resist. He didn’t even stay there, like some sort of floppy body pillow. He kissed back. He returned it with just as much fervour, because hadn’t this been what he was wanting this whole time? When they were on the bus and he was admiring the way Jeonghan’s eyelashes cast faint shadows on his cheeks, the way passing streetlights threw yellow-orange light and shadow onto Jeonghan’s face?

Wasn’t this what he had wanted? Wasn’t this a culmination of all the emotions he’d felt?

And if it was, why did he still feel so terrible?

Seungcheol kissed back harder as if that pressure could seep into his brain and wipe out all thoughts, like Jeonghan’s mouth was some sort of drug that could make him forget his doubts and gripes and thoughts. Hands shifted and moved and slipped under clothes, feet began the slow stumbling way to Jeonghan’s room, where the bed with the silk sheets and memory foam pillows and firm mattress lay in wait.

“No homo, right?” Jeonghan said, breaking away for air and devastation, lips reddened. The words he said so casually were devastating, but then again, so was Jeonghan.

“Sure.”

It was a play Seungcheol had acted out a thousand times. Here was just one more time.

One last time.

* * *

It was a rare day when him, Jeonghan, Jihoon, and Soonyoung were all available at the same time, but Jihoon’s latest release had made it to all-kill status and success deserved a celebration. After a few rounds of debate in the group chat (Jeonghan had vehemently argued against a restaurant at all and wanted a _noraebang_ , while Seungcheol and Jihoon had spent some time fighting over what kind of food to eat), they had finally settled on a small restaurant serving traditional food near Jihoon and Soonyoung’s apartment.

(The two of them lived together, because they were a _real couple_. Couples did things like share apartments.)

When Seungcheol arrived at the restaurant, Jeonghan was close behind him, just making it to the door from the parking lot before Seungcheol did. Jeonghan grabbed the door and made a big show of letting Seungcheol in first, which prompted laughs from both of them. 

“What a gentleman,” Seungcheol said, pretending he was some sort of fabled princess swooning over her prince. “Anything for you, princess,” Jeonghan replied, voice exaggeratedly pompous, and then they laughed again.

That was how they entered the restaurant; laughing, and happy, and with their arms linked. They could almost be a couple.

But Seungcheol shouldn’t get his hopes up.

Jihoon and Soonyoung were already sitting at a table, a menu in front of them their nominal cover for their two heads close together, talking quietly and laughing raucously every once in a while. It was cute. It was also unattainable.

“Hey, Jihoon, Soonyoung,” Seungcheol said, sliding as far as he could into the booth. Jeonghan took the spot next to him, their elbows slightly brushing against each other, their eyes fixated on anywhere that wasn’t the other.

“Hi,” Jihoon said, watching the two of them with more suspicion than was really warranted.

(The two of them weren’t obvious at all; they were pretty good at hiding things under layers of pretension and redirection. He would know.)

“Did you two order yet?” Seungcheol asked, pulling a menu toward him.

“What kind of people do you think we are, hyung?” Soonyoung asked, laughing. “We’d have to have been raised by foreigners to have ordered without our hyungs.”

It was hard to remember, sometimes, that Jihoon was technically also his dongsaeng. The younger man had skipped a grade at some point (little genius), and since they were in the same class and same year, Seungcheol had long since waived the ‘hyung’ requirement for him.

Not for Soonyoung, though. Soonyoung would have to keep on with the honorific.

“Jeonghan,” Jihoon said, eyes latching onto the negative space between Seungcheol and Jeonghan and then back onto the other man’s face. “What do you want to eat?”

Jeonghan shrugged. “I don’t know,” he replied, voice suddenly dull. Seungcheol watched these two men he loved in different ways argue with their eyes and then suddenly let it drop, the hot potato of the argument sizzling on the table.

Soonyoung was not stupid (there was no way to miss it) but this was not his fight to pick. Seungcheol and Soonyoung locked eyes as well and then struck up an exaggerated conversation about what the two of them wanted to order. Seungcheol’s brain spun on repeat as his mouth spouted inane things about jokbal and bulgogi and bossam, what kind of soju to get, if they should get soju at all, if any of them were driving home.

Small talk at its finest.

(Jeonghan’s fingers locked in a death grip around his fingers under the table, and Seungcheol wiggled them a little but let Jeonghan do what he wanted. It was a metaphor he didn’t want to think about.)

“I took the bus on the way here,” Seungcheol said in response to Soonyoung’s question about driving. 

“I drove,” Jeonghan said, sipping from his sweating glass of water. The drops ran down the sides of the glass, and a drop slipped from the glass to Jeonghan’s chin, sliding its way down the other man’s neck.

Seungcheol’s eyes were stuck and he couldn’t move them.

Then Jeonghan turned his head towards Seungcheol and smiled that little, sly, smile, and it was broken. Seungcheol’s eyes were suddenly wrenched away with significant force, and he shakily smiled at Jihoon, who was watching the two of them with a look of disappointment on his face.

(God, it was like his parents were sitting across the table.)

The rest of the dinner went on much like that; little, innocuous things on Jeonghan’s part built up under Seungcheol’s skin, until not even the bossam or the jokbal or the soju could keep his attention. Or maybe the soju was focusing it, refracting it and turning it into thousands of brilliant shards, until it all broke on Jeonghan.

Above the table, they were being slightly rude, perhaps (they were both using only one hand to eat), but normal. They joked around, shot finger guns at each other when they said something in sync, dropped heads on shoulders and then quickly retracted them because they totally weren’t gay.

Not that it mattered, not when this little restaurant was tucked away in a deep, non-tourist part of Seoul, a city where celebrities were a dime a dozen and a good portion of the locals had stopped caring a long time ago. Not when this table was three-quarters out gay guys and one Jeonghan.

But Jeonghan wouldn’t think like that. Jeonghan would worry that someone would recognize him, and then see the two of them acting too close, and then the game would be up. Jeonghan worried about things like that. Seungcheol didn’t have a reputation to ruin.

Under the table, they were teasing each other; feathering fingers over thighs, lacing hands together, playing a discreet game of footsie. When Jeonghan’s foot slipped off the side of Seungcheol’s, he barely concealed his abrupt snort of laughter. Soonyoung didn’t notice, but Jihoon did, and the look that was fixed on Seungcheol could make blood run cold.

Seungcheol’s phone vibrated against his thigh, and he didn’t need to look to know that Jihoon was telling him off. Jihoon had long since advocated for a swift end to whatever Jeonghan and Seungcheol were doing, carrying on and fucking and then playacting at friendship.

(Then again, Jihoon and Soonyoung were no better, were they. They were just as delusional, children playing house in a world absolutely hostile to them. They were all delusional little _kids_.)

He looked anyway. _Just friends don’t look at each other like that_ , the accusation wafting off of the words even through his phone. Seungcheol applied just a little extra pressure to the off button and just like that, Jihoon’s words vanished from his screen. Wiped out. 

(Maybe he should try that; apply a little extra pressure and wipe this whole disaster out.)

“Does anyone know where the bathroom is?” Jeonghan asked suddenly. It wasn’t obviously a cover; Jeonghan had been drinking water at the same pace everyone else was drinking soju, and all of them were healthy drinkers.

“No,” Jihoon and Soonyoung said, and then Seungcheol stood and said, “I’ll go with you.”

(Jihoon was shooting daggers but it was too late to back out now.)

Jeonghan offered that smile again and then they headed off to the bathroom, which (luckily for them) was a single-stall. As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, Jeonghan slid a cigarette pack out of his pocket with a sigh. Seungcheol watched but kept his mouth shut, not saying anything but crossing the room to crack open a window.

Jeonghan lit up and the smoke rose into the air, hazy and grey. Seungcheol coughed discreetly and that was enough. Jeonghan knew his opinion on the death sticks already.

“The fuck was that?” Seungcheol said over his shoulder, his words seemingly aggressive but the tone clearly softening them.

“What do you mean?” Jeonghan replied, leaning against the wall, eyebrows raised.

Seungcheol mimicked Jeonghan’s voice but deliberately pitched it higher, and said, “Does anyone know where the bathroom is?” and laughed. “Like you don’t have eyes, man, the bathroom door was in your line of sight.”

“Well, you weren’t saying anything. Gotta take that initiative, Seungcheol.”

“We sit on the same side of the table, Jeonghan.”

“Hmph,” Jeonghan replied, but the mischievous flash in his eyes was more than enough to tell Seungcheol that the pout was for show.

“Cheer up,” he said. Seungcheol blew a kiss to Jeonghan, mimed the song, making a game of his aegyo and the heat in the bathroom, soju blurring self-protective edges. He laughed, tilting his head back into the slightly grimy bathroom wall.

(Maybe that exposure of neck was what had done it.)

The next moment, Jeonghan was tilting his head with a different light in his eyes, and the temperature had risen five degrees.

“You know what would really cheer me up?” Jeonghan asked, stalking towards Seungcheol like a wolf towards its wounded prey, except in this case Seungcheol wasn’t wounded, just a supplicant at the altar of his god, ready and waiting.

“Hmm,” Seungcheol said, playing at innocence, and then Jeonghan was against him and all thoughts of playing at anything went out the window.

(The cigarette, forgotten, dropped with a flicker of ash to the floor, stamped out by two pairs of shifting feet.)

* * *

It must have been a great week or something, because Seungcheol had gotten praise for his work on an editorial and Jeonghan had just finished a photoshoot for Vogue and here they were, sitting across each other in a window seat at a little hole in the wall Korean BBQ place, smoke from cooking meat wafting up into the air between them.

It hadn’t been easy for Jeonghan to score a Vogue Korea editorial, much less the cover; Seungcheol knew it and knew it well. Jeonghan had peppered his phone with panicked texts in the hours before the 4 am call time, and Seungcheol, bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived from editing photos for an editorial of his own, had replied with vague but encouraging texts and then gotten back to work, as he usually did.

He probably should have been kinder about it; men rarely scored Vogue covers, and Korean men even less often. For a magazine that was ostensibly directed at the Korean audience, the Vogue cover models were white a heck of a lot of the time. But that was a rant that Seungcheol would save for another day, to pair with his other finely aged rant about how a Korean edition of an international magazine with brand name power didn’t use its name to launch Korean photographers into the stratosphere; Korean photographers for the cover shoots were about as common as Korean models.

But he hadn’t been, and there was nothing he could do about it. And Jeonghan had obviously acquitted himself well, since the texts had dribbled to a stop, and Seungcheol had heard only good things about the photographer, a Chinese man who apparently spoke good Korean by the name of Xu Minghao in Chinese, or Seo Myungho in Korean.

It was hard to drag Jeonghan out to eat anything meaty; Seungcheol had often said that Jeonghan was pretty much a de facto vegetarian at this point, and Jeonghan often smiled a little and said nothing.

He did that a lot. That model smile that hid more than it revealed but made a damn good show of it, pretending that he was laying everything out for you when really he was showing you nothing. Seungcheol had seen it often, on Jeonghan’s face and others. It was the small talk and empty words of an accomplished gossip, as if they were sharing so much of themselves when really all that was happening was them dragging your darkest secrets out of you while telling you nothing more consequential than a hatred of cats.

Jeonghan used his model smile to deflect. Fortunately or unfortunately, Seungcheol was easily deflected when it came to Jeonghan.

Jeonghan flipped a piece of meat with the tongs, watched it sizzle a few more moments. They both reached for it at the same time, but Seungcheol’s hand retracted first.

Jeonghan ended up gently depositing the slice of perfectly cooked meat in Seungcheol’s bowl, atop a pillow of rice. Seungcheol looked at it for a few more moments, the steam slowly curling up towards him, bringing with it the scent of meat. His chopsticks clinked, and then he slowly took it and ate it himself.

There was no point trying to get Jeonghan to eat it. The mushrooms cooking on the sides of the grill were pretty much all for him. It was how Jeonghan justified coming out here to eat, and Seungcheol let him. He knew, too, about justifying things in your head.

Sometimes, it was the only way to live.

“So, what was he like?” Seungcheol said, finally popping the silence that lay between them, punctuated by the sounds of cooking meat.

“Hm?”

“Seo Myungho,” Seungcheol elaborated.

“Oh.” Jeonghan took a moment to think about it – or just eat the mushrooms. Seungcheol couldn’t tell.

“He has a really strong accent, but he’s not terrible at Korean,” Jeonghan said, pensively chewing on his mushroom. “Pretty cute, legs are long as fuck. I’m surprised he’s not a model, honestly,” he continued, picking up speed now as he got going, like a rusty train that had just turned on its engine. “You know his style. He loves pretty scenery, pretty people, those really coloured filters.”

“Saturated,” Seungcheol prompted, more familiar with the jargon of his profession than Jeonghan, who forgot the words for things even when they weren’t photographer language.

“Yeah, that,” Jeonghan said. “Total softie for dogs. And he’s really graceful,” he continued, trailing off as he thought about it for a second. “He walks the way Soonyoung does, you know? That like...I don’t know how to say it. Coordinated?”

“Like a dancer,” Seungcheol said, accustomed to filling in Jeonghan’s verbal blanks. “Graceful? Elegant?”

He often took a spaghetti at the wall approach to figuring out what Jeonghan was trying to say, but it worked.

“One of those,” Jeonghan said, waving a hand airily. Seungcheol was momentarily distracted (those fingers, long and elegant and perfectly shaped and god he was in way too deep but photographers noticed things like that; the composition would be perfect), eyes latched onto the hand instead of Jeonghan.

“You okay?” Jeonghan asked, voice light and teasing, as if in on some cosmic joke (them; this whole situation was a cosmic joke played on Seungcheol, this relationship, this moment, these long years) that Seungcheol wasn’t privy to.

“Great,” Seungcheol croaked. “Just great.”

He downed a long sip of water, forgoing his untouched soju, and fervently wished for this to pass.

“You know,” Jeonghan said, toying with the label on the soju bottle, “there’s a morality clause in my contract.”

“Yeah?” Seungcheol said, heart picking up for a moment. _Am I a sin, then? Is that what this is?_

“Yeah,” Jeonghan echoed. “No drinking, no smoking. No plastic surgery. Nothing that can be scandalous.”

The way Jeonghan said scandalous was both ironic and bitter, which was how Seungcheol felt most of the time when he was with Jeonghan.

_I guess all I am is a scandal in the making for you. Tabloid fodder, blood in the water for sharks._

“Guess you’re not all that good at following it, then,” Seungcheol commented. “You smoke as much as the next model.”

“I follow the part that counts,” Jeonghan said, and sipped from his water.

( _The no homo part?_ A little voice in Seungcheol’s head piped up, and he slapped it down.)

“Hey, Jeonghan,” Seungcheol said, offhand, as if he hadn’t been turning and shining these words in his head for a while. “Why do you model, anyway?”

“Why are you a photographer?” Jeonghan shot back rhetorically. “Because I like it. And it’s all I’ve got. The lights and the cameras and the fame.”

A few beats of silence, coinciding with a lull in the saccharine voices playing in the background. Some rookie girl group with a bright aesthetic, a repetitive hook, lyrics about young love and being unable to confess.

(Was modelling really all Jeonghan had? Didn’t Jeonghan have friends and things and money, that most effective of cushions? Didn’t Jeonghan have, well, him? Or were they both just lonely people grasping for each other?)

“What about me?” Seungcheol finally said, pouring artificial brightness into his voice. 

“And you,” Jeonghan said, a fond smile tilting his mouth up. “Always you, Seungcheol,” and Seungcheol took the words and folded them into his chest, as if they would warm him when the nights were cold and Jeonghan wasn’t there.

Snap, crackle, pop. Seungcheol tilted his head and watched what he could see of the flame flicker on.

“There’s this new model on the scene that’s pretty,” Jeonghan said casually, as if this wasn’t the equivalent of a glove to the face.

“It’s sort of a job requirement, isn’t it?” Seungcheol replied, affecting nonchalance. “Models are supposed to look good.”

“She’s _really_ pretty, and good at it. She was at fashion week too.”

“Was she now?” Seungcheol said inanely, frantically trying to decipher what sort of message Jeonghan is trying to get out with this.

“What’s her name?” he asked, and that persistent knell of doubt took up its ringing in his head again; _what if he’s straight what if this is all a drawn-out homophobic joke what if what if what if._

“Hong Jisoo.”

And what more could he say to that?

Thankfully, they finished eating soon after and Seungcheol and Jeonghan stepped out into the filthy residue of a big city in the deep slush of mid-January. It slowly sank and gave in under his boots, a strangely satisfying assertion of power over the natural.

This entire city was an assertion of power over the natural. If only he could do the same.

Seungcheol grabbed Jeonghan by the arm (not the hand, never the hand; the arm could still be explained away, was safely platonic), pulled the other man after him as they get to the parking lot. Jeonghan had an actual _car_ and everything, and on the rare occasions that Jeonghan took it out while he was with Seungcheol, Seungcheol took a strange delight in driving it.

He didn’t have the money for a car, and probably didn’t really need one, especially since he lived in Seoul. But it brought back memories, of a sixteen-year-old dressed like he didn’t know who he wanted to be, driving down city streets in his parents’ car. It felt like youth.

God knew he needed something good.

Jeonghan laughed at Seungcheol’s eagerness but passed the keys over without a second thought, and times like these, Seungcheol can believe it, his little fantasy that he gets to live out; that they are dating, and open, and in love. That this, whatever this was, was more than the tide coming back to crash into the shore again every time and wreck itself a little more. More than Jeonghan being too good at making him stay and Seungcheol too bad at leaving.

(He had tried to leave before, tried to make himself do it. If he just said it, Jeonghan would probably listen, but Seungcheol wouldn’t know, because he’s never even tried.)

They squabbled over the radio in the car like an old married couple, played with the power windows like children. Jeonghan’s hand settled over Seungcheol’s on the shift as he pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, quiet, warm.

It was painfully domestic. He loved it.

* * *

Later that night, Seungcheol lay awake, staring at the bumps in his apartment ceiling. Increasingly often, he found himself in this position; a state of undress, in either his or Jeonghan’s bed, eyes wide open, wondering what the hell he’d just done.

He said every time that he’d end it. But one look at Jeonghan, one smile, one kiss, and all that...didn’t fly out the window exactly, but seemed to matter less. He’d never get what he was wishing for. Seungcheol knew by now that not only did Jeonghan want to keep it a secret, he didn’t even want them to become a relationship. Just...sex one day and friendship the next. Platonic and sexual, with a harsh, thick line in between. So if he couldn’t get that, why not settle? People were taught to adapt, to make do.

Seungcheol was just making do. And it wasn’t like he could just up and leave. He could barely even imagine it. Jeonghan could fuck him up in a thousand different ways and he would probably just come back like a fool.

(No probably about it, as Jihoon would say.)

But how could he not? Moments with Jeonghan made him feel like he’s just finished reading a good book; words echo inside of him like a never-ending hallway until all he can hear, all he can see, all he can feel is Jeonghan Jeonghan Jeonghan, slip-sliding together.

How could he leave that behind? After all, if he said no to this part of their relationship, what was to say that Jeonghan wouldn’t just up and leave himself? It had been so long since this began that to imagine the two of them without this lying between them was unthinkable.

They were tragic and doomed and he knew it, and right now Seungcheol felt like breaking, like waves breaking on the shore that always came back, like Jeonghan always pulled him back, like the red string of fate had tied them together and tightened like chains whenever he wanted to leave. Or maybe he just never really wanted to leave.

Jeonghan shifted in his sleep next to him and Seungcheol’s gaze slanted over before he could think about it.

Jeonghan’s eyelashes were just as beautiful in Seungcheol’s dark bedroom and shitty lighting filtering through the curtains as they were on the bus so many weeks ago, with street lights casting yellow-orange tints on his skin, a filter so perfectly saturated you could never replicate it in Photoshop. Jeonghan was a model, a living mannequin for others to practice their art on; makeup, fashion, photography. The face of Jeonghan in magazines was not the face of Jeonghan in real life but even without makeup Seungcheol couldn’t help but think that Jeonghan was beautiful.

He was in too deep and drowning in it, but those who drown are often not those who scream the loudest.

Seungcheol was drowning, and he wasn’t screaming at all.

(He had to end it. He knew that. There was a reason they talked about unhealthy relationships in school. But at the same time, how could he? That was what he came back to, time after time.)

* * *

The moment Seungcheol got a shoot with Jeonghan was the moment he knew he was really heading up.

Yoon Jeonghan was known to the world as a Korean supermodel. His face appeared on the covers of magazines like Vogue, Numéro, i-D, High Cut. He walked in shows for brands like Versace, Tom Ford, and Tommy Hilfiger. In the world of modelling, the name Yoon Jeonghan was no joke.

Choi Seungcheol, however, was barely known to the world at all. He was merely a South Korean fashion photographer on the up and up, shooting editorials for many of the magazines Jeonghan had appeared in but never the cover. He shot ad campaigns for the brands Jeonghan had walked for but never major ones, never alone.

This moment, though, the moment he read the email from High Cut asking if he was willing to shoot an editorial and a cover with Yoon Jeonghan and a rising female model named Hong Jisoo, he knew he had made it.

This was his chance, his leverage, his opportunity. Choi Seungcheol would be broke no more.

Unless he messed up big time, in which case Choi Seungcheol might be broke forever. But he couldn’t think that way.

Seungcheol tapped out a reply, fingers flying over his keyboard, without even thinking about it. Yes, of course he was willing. Name a time and place.

The implications of working with Yoon Jeonghan didn’t appear in his mind until three hours later, when he checked the reply and realized he was going to have to work with stylists and assistants for a major photoshoot, put out call sheets, and force the notoriously lazy Yoon Jeonghan to wake up at six in the morning. Friends worked with friends in this industry all the time; new faces came in and out, but there were always the same old same old, to the point that relationships became almost incestuous in their complications, this supermodel’s ex-boyfriend is a top photographer who shoots this supermodel’s new boyfriend who is also another supermodel’s best friend who is a photographer’s ex and so on. It was the same in any kind of media or entertainment. It didn’t mean they were going to cut each other slack when it came to call times or demands. It often ended up that way, but it didn’t necessarily mean that.

So few produced content for so many, and Seungcheol was now one of the few.

Seungcheol debated texting Jeonghan with questions, asking what Hong Jisoo was like, whether she was easy to work with, whether Jeonghan was going to make this too hard for him. High Cut was thinking something a little risque for the editorial, laden with hot, sticky innuendo in the style that fashion magazines loved to print, black and white and sultry, faces close together, crotches close together, highlights on necks and exposed female thighs.

Burning, feline gazes straight at the camera, and who was behind that camera? Seungcheol, Choi Seungcheol, only twenty-five years old and not ready for a heart attack because Yoon Jeonghan was eye-fucking him at work.

That’s what this was, after all. Work. Work with a close friend, but work. And that wasn’t even taking the cover shoot into account, which featured Jeonghan up close in the High Cut style, a facial shot. The camera would be so close Jeonghan could kiss it.

Not Seungcheol, though his camera felt like part of him most days. Just glass, a barrier between the two of them.

It was work. Just work.

The editorial shoot was in a week.

He needed to pull himself together by then.

(When it came to Jeonghan, Seungcheol wasn’t very good at following through on promises he made to himself.)

* * *

The day of the editorial shoot, Seungcheol was there about as early as Jeonghan was. Both of them, photographer and model, needed to get there at six, Jeonghan because of makeup and styling, Seungcheol because this was his shoot and he needed to make sure everything was set up correctly, because if it wasn’t, it was wasting everyone’s time. Poor Hong Jisoo, however, had gotten there even earlier, because female models needed more makeup and hair time, and apparently there was a manicurist onsite too.

It wasn’t like they were going to get a close shot of Jisoo’s nails but Seungcheol knew that in fashion, all the little details counted.

Seungcheol and Jeonghan happened to walk in at the same time, Jeonghan dressed in a model’s off-duty uniform; perfectly fitted skinny jeans, a nice t-shirt and a statement jacket, either leather or bomber. If it wasn’t a jacket, it was a wool coat. Seungcheol had seen his fair share of male models in street clothes, loitering around the back alleys or dressing rooms of fashion week, stressed hands lighting up a pack of cigarettes. He knew the rules. Jeonghan quickly disappeared into the hair and makeup staffers without a second glance at Seungcheol.

Seungcheol was no male model. He came in with his one pair of sneakers, a well-worn pair of jeans, and his winter jacket on. He shed it when he saw the photographer’s chair, on wheels and in front of the monitor where he would be looking at the images while the models were on break. He deposited his coat on the chair and then headed off to the makeup and hair stations, sectioned off from the rest of the studio so that they could do their thing.

“Jisoo’s here?” he asked, poking his head in.

“Yeah, I’m getting her hair done,” one of the staff answered, distracted, and Seungcheol invited himself onto a couch.

Hong Jisoo dressed exactly the way off-duty models dressed; some sort of heel, skinny jeans or even leather pants, or a dress or skirt if not the above, a blouse or shirt that invariably showed off toned abs or bony shoulders, a bomber or leather jacket (denim if they were daring), a brand-name purse, a beautiful coat. Hong Jisoo had decided to go for the idol going to the airport look; pretty but sensible heeled boots, black skinny jeans, a white t-shirt tucked in artfully. A trenchcoat and small bag were tossed next to each other on the couch where Seungcheol was sitting.

In the mirror, their eyes met. Hong Jisoo had exactly what Jeonghan had said; a cute face. She was a model in the cast of cutesy idols, ones who had aegyo to spare and eyesmiles galore. Jisoo’s lips curled up in the mirror.

No eyesmile, but they were shooting high fashion, not fansite photos. Smiles weren’t needed.

Double eyelids, always an asset in fashion. Almost feline eyes in terms of shape, which would help when it came to this editorial. Seungcheol knew Jeonghan could pull off sexy (lord did he know), but he’d almost been thrown off by Jisoo’s face, which tended more towards cute than sexy. But she must have made it this far for a reason. Models changed faces and personas at the drop of a hat.

Those eyes were going to help her out a lot.

Jisoo finished soon after and glanced at him, not warily, but not in a friendly manner either, before sitting on the opposite end of the couch and rummaging through her purse.

“Hi,” Seungcheol said, mentally punching himself for such a terrible opening. “I’m Choi Seungcheol, I’m the photographer.” Not knowing what else to do, he extended his hand for a handshake. That was appropriately professional, wasn’t it?

Hong Jisoo’s lips curled up again. “Hong Jisoo,” she replied, shaking his hand firmly. “The model.” A pause, then, “Or one of them, at least.”

“You know Jeonghan, right?” Seungcheol said, recalling a dinner with Jeonghan a few weeks ago. Sizzling meat on a grill, his untouched soju slowly going flat, dirty snow, the leather seats of Jeonghan’s car, the constellations on the ceiling at 3 am with Jeonghan next to him, breathing loud. His own thoughts, running around in circles inside his head.

Somewhere in there, the name Hong Jisoo had come up.

Right. Jeonghan had said she was really pretty, and good at modelling, and they had met at fashion week.

“Yeah,” Jisoo said, smiling wider and more sincere as she uncapped a bottle of water. Her wrists were thin, the bone jutting out at an angle.

(That was some sort of composition. Stark and defined and resonating; he loved it. He wanted it in black and white and framed on his wall.)

“We were both at fashion week, and he introduced me to some of the other models. I got into the scene relatively late, you know,” Jisoo said, now gaining steam as if they were old friends. It reminded him of Jeonghan, like a transparency overlaid over the girl sitting with him now, one moment Jeonghan in the restaurant, one moment Jisoo in the studio.

“So did he, actually,” Seungcheol said, almost absently. “He was...twenty, twenty-one.” As if he didn’t know the exact date Jeonghan first started modelling, when his friend was launched into the stratosphere of the industry. Jeonghan had given up all those old dreams then, discarded like snakeskin, but he’d still graduated.

Models don’t stay forever, he’d said at the time. Nothing gold can stay, he’d said, quoting a foreign movie they had watched in first year. I need something to fall back on, he’d said, as if the piles of money in his bank account weren’t enough backup.

But that was his ambition, his bitterness, seeping in, colouring old memories the wrong shades, like a toddler with a pack of crayons and nothing better to do.

“But he just took off after that. Impressive, really,” Seungcheol said, as if he didn’t fervently wish for a career trajectory like that.

“You two are friends, aren’t you?” Jisoo asked, eyes a shade too perceptive for his taste. “From university?”

“We are,” Seungcheol said, mouth lifting. “We were roommates. Funny, isn’t it, that we both ended up in fashion?”

He laughed, as if it were a joke instead of a cruel twist of fate. Jisoo watched him but laughed too.

“I guess like attracts like,” she commented.

“Yeah, I guess,” Seungcheol said, and then Jeonghan came striding in, long legs still clad in skinny jeans (funny enough, the two of them matched, both in black jeans), hair and makeup now done, a charming smile already emblazoned on his face.

“You guess what?” Jeonghan said easily, dropping himself between Seungcheol and Jisoo on the couch. “Is our cute little Jisoo over here telling riddles?” Jeonghan made as if to tweak Jisoo’s cheek, _ajumma_ style, but Jisoo slapped his hand away lightly, giggling.

“Jeonghan, we’re the same age. What little Jisoo are you talking about?” Jisoo said, nose wrinkling. “You, of course,” Jeonghan replied, teasing banter clearly already set up between them. Seungcheol watched as an arm was draped over Jisoo’s unprotesting shoulder, unsure what exactly of his roiling emotions were showing on his face.

(There was a big difference between knowing Jeonghan had female friends that he could be extremely close with and _seeing_ it, all those stories and editorials and ad campaigns thrown into sharper relief by the enlightenment this encounter had given.)

“You two are pretty close,” Seungcheol commented, still unsure how much poisonous jealousy and barbed meaning was sliding into his voice.

(Too much history, not enough restraint, and Jisoo’s eyes were as percipient as always.)

“Fast friends,” she replied, a little French shrug accompanying it.

“It’s good,” he said, voice trying too hard to be light. “Hopefully it’s not awkward when the shoot starts.”

“We’re professionals,” Jisoo assured, and there was what sounded like a double meaning in there.

Seungcheol didn’t bother sniffing it out.

“Let’s get off to styling and then we can get started.”

* * *

The shoot was excruciating.

Jeonghan and Jisoo spent the shoot tightly entwined in various positions, one shot with Jisoo’s leg up and exposed by her dress, one shot where all you could see was Jisoo’s back and Jeonghan’s gaze as he looked straight into the camera, a folder of shots where they were in various poses on chairs and the sex was almost palpable, a shot here and there where they were alone. But for most of the editorial, they were together, and it was like someone stabbing a knife into Seungcheol’s stomach.

He was jealous. He knew it, was willing to admit it. He was no teenager in their first relationship, trying to be stoic and keep their problems quiet. Seungcheol didn’t deny such obvious things, not when he had been in love with Jeonghan since university, not when he had been chasing after the other man for so long. This was not the first time.

It wouldn’t be the last.

The realization hit him as he was shooting one of the solo shots for the editorial with Jisoo, that if they continued like this he would never be free of this monster in his stomach. That this would repeat itself over and over again as Seungcheol’s career continued on its trajectory. He would bump into Jeonghan more at fashion shows, do more editorials and covers and ad campaigns with him, which would invariably involve others. Jeonghan would invariably be close with them, would flirt with them, would even find a pretty girl to kiss up against a wall after a show. Because that was straight people did.

They were technically not even exclusive, because ‘they’ didn’t exist. If someone asked Jeonghan, point blank, whether he and Seungcheol were fucking, the answer would be no.

And for maybe the first time, Seungcheol realized, for real, that he couldn’t live like that.

He was in his twenties, developing a good career. Jihoon had told him, a few months ago, that backstage people got the privilege of being queer and somewhat out, of dating other men. The people that went in front of the cameras, the models and actors and idols, they didn’t get that. That was what Jihoon had said.

Even if their relationship had to be secret, he could live with that. But _this_ was nothing. This was a non-entity, an illegal alien trespassing on other territory. Seungcheol had once thought, long ago, that it didn’t matter if Jeonghan didn’t realize how much he meant to Seungcheol. That letting Jeonghan take whatever he wanted from Seungcheol, whenever he wanted, was friendship and kindness and something like love.

But Jeonghan had never wanted love to be part of this.

Seungcheol blearily realized that his camera had stopped clicking and Jisoo was looking at him strangely. “Sorry,” he said, blinking hard. “I just thought of something.” Turning to one of the staff, he said, “Can you get a chair in here? Thanks,” and then dashed off a verbal memo to Jisoo, “Can you put your leg up on the chair? Yeah, like that.”

It looked like that performance from Produce 101, that After School song where they rotated their butts in time with the beat.

The picture reeked of sex. Exactly what the magazine wanted.

(What Jeonghan wanted.)

* * *

There were little fires burning all over Seungcheol’s skin, above and beneath, simmering away in his blood.

He had made it through the editorial shoot; Jisoo had left early because she was only in the editorial, not the cover, and they had moved on to shooting the cover shot with Jeonghan’s face, close-up and intimate.

There was a metaphor somewhere in there, about how the two of them were close enough to kiss, breathing quiet and careful, about how intimate this whole thing was but how vast it was at the same time, how Seungcheol was here up close to Jeonghan but surrounded by staff, how this moment was just Seungcheol and Jeonghan, eyes locked on each other but the camera in the way would disseminate this shot to thousands of people. About how a moment could be between two people but broadcast to thousands at the same time.

(Jeonghan was not his.)

Jeonghan tilted his head a different angle, breathed out hard, once. Seungcheol’s finger stilled on the camera for a moment, watching Jeonghan change positions, and felt his heart contract once, hard. His shutter went off, a flurry of sound, the moment gone.

(If this ended, could he take a situation like this again? He couldn’t even focus now, when they were on good terms.)

They finished after another hour of burning himself away, like that Greek myth about the man whose life is attached to a stick; when it is burned up, he dies. Seungcheol was slowly burning himself up, slowly waiting to die.

Before, those fires had been lust or attraction or love or something like all three. Now, it was pain, it was anger, it was resignation.

Because they couldn’t continue living like this. Seungcheol couldn’t keep living like this.

The staff was all chattering away in muted tones, packing things up, moving things around. Jeonghan and Seungcheol remained still, the hurricane’s double eyes. Seungcheol’s breathing was laboured, his eyes latched onto Jeonghan’s.

Jeonghan wasn’t moving either.

He wet his lips, carefully, and then, “We need to talk.”

Jeonghan broke himself out of his marble cast, features melting into something approximating human instead of immortal. “Sure,” he said. “Let me change first.”

Seungcheol paced around himself for a moment before moving off to his photographer’s chair, dropping himself into it so he could peruse the photos with bad posture.

Jeonghan looked painfully good in them, like some sort of dark angel or black and white siren, here to pull you away from what you should be doing and into doing him instead. Seungcheol knew that look well. It was one he had received many times over the years, one he hopefully would not receive again without being in the context of a real romantic relationship.

“They look good,” a disembodied voice said from over his right shoulder, and Seungcheol looked up to meet Jeonghan’s brown eyes.

“You’re just complimenting yourself,” Seungcheol pointed out. Jeonghan’s mouth pulled up in a wry smile, accompanied by a _what can you do_ shrug. “I deserve them, and a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.”

 _It’s not like you don’t get enough compliments on a daily basis_ , Seungcheol thought.

Jeonghan found a chair somewhere and dragged it over to Seungcheol and his camera. “So,” Jeonghan said, clearly expectant. “You wanted to say something?”

(Seungcheol abruptly realized that Jeonghan had not called him Cheollie in a long time.)

Seungcheol’s mouth opened, closed. He tried again. “We can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?” Jeonghan said, eyebrows faintly furrowed in a move that only made him look endearingly confused.

Seungcheol’s hands performed a series of strange motions, as if it would create words out of nowhere. “Fucking and pretending it never happened,” was what he finally settled on. “You can’t just no homo me and expect there to be _nothing_ , Jeonghan,” he said, voice beginning to build. “If we’re fucking so much, there’s clearly some homo, Jeonghan, in me and you both. The least you could do is admit it.”

Jeonghan shook his head.

(Jeonghan was shaking his head, why was he shaking his head, Seungcheol hadn’t even said anything remotely disputable?)

“I’m not gay, though. I’m straight,” Jeonghan said, words laden with generous amounts of denial in a tone that Seungcheol knew so well, one he had used on himself in the mirror as a teenager in high school, grasping at the bathroom counter (not gay, he’d said, and look at him now).

“Is that what we call people who fuck men now?” Seungcheol asked, voice dripping with so much satire he might as well go into comedy. “That’s new. Maybe I can get married and live openly now.”

He paused for dramatic effect, then said, “You’re gay, Jeonghan. Or at least not straight. You don’t go around having sex with your male best friend when you are also male and then call it _straight_.”

Jeonghan’s chest was heaving now, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip. Jeonghan stood up all of a sudden, chair not toppling over but moving back a decent amount. “You don’t understand,” he hissed, eyes bright with something Seungcheol couldn’t quite identify.

“I _can’t_ be gay. If it gets out, I’m dead. All this would be _gone,”_ and Jeonghan’s voice finally broke.

And Seungcheol had no ready words left. After all, he knew the truth of this industry. He lived and breathed it, spent all day and all night creating what this industry dealt in; images. Ideas. Illusions. He knew how vicious this industry was, how vicious this country was. All he could do was wish it wasn’t.

More than that, he knew how Jeonghan thought of modelling. The ‘all this’ Jeonghan spoke of was everything to the other man, was the only thing he had. Jeonghan was desperately, fundamentally, _lonely_ on the inside. Even with ‘all this’. Jeonghan had few friends these days, besides Seungcheol and other models. Fashion was so insular. It was hard to have friends outside of that, to find a way to breathe outside the world that even Seungcheol, who had stayed in this relationship for so long, had to admit was fucked up.

And money was no consolation for that loneliness, that suffocation. It might be self-imposed, but in a way, Jeonghan had no escape. Even with that back-up plan of a degree. How could he explain that large gap on his resume, the years of fashion modelling, to an employer?

He couldn’t. And so the world of entertainment kept its prey until it rotted and withered away, kept models around as designers or photographers or brand ambassadors, hidden away inside fashion houses or branching out into acting. 

The look in Jeonghan’s eyes, that of prey trapped and looking for a way out, made him feel cruel, and he hated it. How many times had he seen that look in his own eyes, bathroom mirror at 3 am, Jeonghan in his bed? And here he was, turning the tables.

There was no pleasure to be found in that, only hollowness.

“So you’re not even going to be honest with yourself?” he finally asked.

(At some point he had stood up too, and here they were, toe to toe. Just two people infinitely scared of themselves staring each other in the face.)

Jeonghan laughed a sad, bitter laugh. “You know as well as I do that it’s easier to live out a persona if you keep it up forever. There is no difference between Yoon Jeonghan from Seoul and Yoon Jeonghan the model anymore. And Yoon Jeonghan the model is not gay.”

Suddenly, irrationally, he wanted to cry. He wanted to vomit, he wanted to punch something, he wanted to go out and find a bar in Itaewon and drown himself in burning alcohol. Douse the fires with something else that burned.

Seungcheol had thought he’d need to fight Jeonghan. He ended up finding out that he would need to fight the world, and he was no teenager screaming _fight me_ at everything anymore, heart slamming itself against his ribs. He didn’t have the energy for that.

“That’s a pity,” Seungcheol said after a long moment. “Because Choi Seungcheol the photographer is, and so is Choi Seungcheol from Daegu. And,” he switched from third to first person, “I really wanted this to be something real.”

“Cheollie,” Jeonghan said after a moment of silence, as if they were already mourning the death of their relationship.

And Seungcheol knew what Jeonghan was saying.

(At least they’d finally been honest with each other.)

“I can’t take this anymore,” he whispered, shuddering from the effort of holding back emotion until he could be by himself, a thousand discreet eyes whirling around them. The two of them weren’t making a scene (they were too good, even now, at keeping things quiet), but he could not forget that the staff was around them.

(Even now, at this moment, they couldn’t be alone. The end would be played out in front of a group of staff who probably couldn’t care less.)

“Honestly,” he replied, “neither can I.”

* * *

The absence of Jeonghan felt like a hole in his stomach.

It felt like he was a teenager pining after his crush all over again; glancing at his phone every five minutes, coming to a dead stop in the grocery store when he saw something or someone that reminded him of Jeonghan. At one point, Seungcheol took clothes Jeonghan had left at his place out from their spot in his closet and stared at them for an afternoon. Seungcheol chased obsessively after all the model news for a while, then went the other way and blocked himself from searching for photos or editorials or the latest gossip on supermodel Yoon Jeonghan.

Because that was what he was.

( _Yoon Jeonghan the supermodel was not gay.)_

Seungcheol met up with Jihoon again one day, at the same coffee shop as last time. They sat by the window, and Seungcheol watched the world go by as his coffee slowly went cold.

(He had tried to text Jeonghan, once, twice, three times. Jeonghan had left him on read, and Seungcheol had taken the hint. They were probably better off like this. Silent. Cold. Apart.)

“I told you,” Jihoon finally said, the sigh evident in his voice. “People don’t change for other people, Seungcheol. I said it back when you first started liking Jeonghan. And he’s only ever said he was straight.”

“But he’s not,” was all Seungcheol said back, voice low. “Not that it matters. You were right, Jihoon. You always are.”

Jihoon’s mouth curled wryly. “Now if only the rest of the world would figure that out. Or just Soonyoung.”

“The man worships you, Jihoon,” Seungcheol replied, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Jeonghan. “He’d say you were right if you told him the sun was green.”

“Yeah, well,” Jihoon said, trying his best not to preen. “It’d be nice if he listened so well when I tell him to clean up his mess.”

( _“You should try cleaning up after yourself for once, Mr. I’m So Rich I Can’t Clean,” Seungcheol sniped at Jeonghan, setting the tissue box back on the nightstand. Jeonghan laughed, head tilting further back into the pillow. “Why would I when I have you around, Cheol?” and his hand ran its way through Seungcheol’s hair. “You and my money will always be around to clean up after me.”)_

The ghost of Seungcheol’s happiness vanished again.

“At least you have him,” he sighed.

Jihoon’s eyes fixated on him. “At least I do,” he replied.

* * *

**Jeonghan:** you left some stuff at my place

Seungcheol considered the very real possibility of making a snide comment about how Jeonghan talked to him now, or just not replying and giving Jeonghan a taste of his own medicine. But between the two of them, Seungcheol had always been the adult. The mature one. And it was his stuff, after all. He might as well just take this chance and get it over with.

Spring cleaning. Maybe Jeonghan was going to throw him out with the rest of the trash this spring. Maybe Seungcheol should do the same.

 **Seungcheol:** i’ll come get it

A little while later, Seungcheol found himself under the same old awning, pressing the same old call button. The lobby hadn’t changed. Seungcheol wasn’t sure why he was expecting it to be different. It wasn’t like the world revolved around him. Something earth-shattering could be happening in his life and the world would go on.

When Seungcheol entered Jeonghan’s apartment, he found it hadn’t changed either. Everything was in the same spot. The stack of romcoms was still in a prominent spot on the shelf. The couch was still covered in cushions and blankets.

Jeonghan, like his apartment, looked the same. Seungcheol didn’t know what Jeonghan saw when he looked at him, but looking at Jeonghan, all Seungcheol could see was the same person he’d fallen for, all those years ago. He’d let himself be dragged around and manipulated (knowingly or unknowingly), let himself settle.

Maybe it really was time to move on. People did that, didn’t they? That was a thing normal people did. Move on.

(But it had been so long since Seungcheol had been normal. Maybe he never had been.)

“You left some clothes,” Jeonghan said, awkward, and then offered a pile of clothes; grey sweatpants, white t-shirts, a few colourful sweaters he recognized. Seungcheol didn’t know what else to do, so he took them.

Past history gaped like a chasm between them. They could bridge it, but only if they wanted to. And looking at them, Seungcheol couldn’t see a desire to bridge that gap in either of them.

“So.”

Silence, broken. Seungcheol wanted to grasp at the pieces, cut himself on them. Watch the blood run red. It would be something, at least. Stain the white rug. Leave a mark of himself in this apartment, where the only hint he’d ever existed he could see were the clothes he was holding and the movies on Jeonghan’s shelf.

He wondered what Jeonghan would see of himself in his apartment.

“I guess this is it?” Jeonghan said, voice curling up at the end.

“This is it,” Seungcheol repeated.

After so many years of friendship, some things they could leave unsaid. The implication that they wouldn’t be like before was there. They were friends, had been only friends before, but they’d been friends and fuckbuddies for so long that Seungcheol couldn’t even see a future for them as just friends.

There was too much there. And until Jeonghan decided that Seungcheol and a romantic relationship (even in secret, he could live with that) was more important than a fleeting career as a model, then they were going to live apart.

Better to make it a clean cut than to drag it out.

“I never told you I loved you,” Seungcheol said, almost absently. “But I did. I do. I guess you should know that.”

“Was that why...” Jeonghan trailed off. Seungcheol finished it for him, as he so often had before: _was that why you stayed for so long?_

“...yes.”

“But then why would you finally say something? It’s been years and you never...”

Jeonghan was oddly bad at finishing thoughts today.

“I guess I finally realized that I couldn’t live like this anymore. You know,” here, Seungcheol laughed, “I kept telling myself I’d end it. That this was the last time. And then I’d say, no, one more time. Just one more time. I guess I knew it’d end like this.”

“You should have told me,” Jeonghan said.

“Better late than never, right,” Seungcheol tried to say, but his voice broke on the rocks of grief. Jeonghan’s face crumpled, and the two of them stood there in Jeonghan’s living room, two successful men in their twenties staring the end in the face.

There were tears on both sides, but they were both pretty good by now at pretending the obvious didn’t exist.

“Can I kiss you?” Jeonghan finally said.

“Never could say no to you,” Seungcheol replied, and this kiss was one of those rare, quiet ones. A goodbye. It was no declaration of love, no passionate promise. It was just...a kiss. Mouth on mouth, quiet breaths.

“If I hurt you, I --” Jeonghan began, but Seungcheol cut him off.

“That kind of apology is better off not said at all,” he said, and Jeonghan sort of huffed out a laugh and then smiled.

“I do love you,” Jeonghan finally said. “But it’s not the right kind. It’s not enough. You deserve better.”

“What kind is it, then?” Seungcheol asked, eyes meeting Jeonghan’s.

“The kind where I end up putting my love for my career above you,” Jeonghan said, and it was the truth, illuminated by a bare light bulb, but it was finally the truth.

They both put their love for themselves above their love for each other, but Seungcheol could live with that.

(He was settling; just for something that wouldn’t tear him apart from the inside out.)

“It will all be gone soon, I know,” Jeonghan said, trying to explain himself. “But I have to keep it while I can, you know what I mean?”

Even now, Jeonghan was assuming Seungcheol would be around, all those years down the line.

“I don’t know if I’ll be around waiting for you by then,” he said, and his voice sounded distant in his own head.

Jeonghan’s face crumpled again, but Seungcheol could see the other man smoothing the creases out, putting himself back together. It was a process he’d love to photograph, but he’d probably never get the chance to again. “I think I can live with that,” Jeonghan said.

“So can I,” Seungcheol said. “And, you know. If I am still around waiting.”

He didn’t need to finish that. Jeonghan and Seungcheol had too many years of shared history for them to need to spell everything out.

Seungcheol offered a smile, then quietly let himself out.

(The sun was shining and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. The sky couldn’t have been more wrong.)

* * *

Life without Jeonghan felt like a traffic intersection with no cars and the traffic lights going, like Seungcheol was going through the motions with nobody there to care.

Except there was Jihoon. And Soonyoung. And even Jisoo, who Seungcheol eventually came to befriend after working with her a few more times. She was bright, and perceptive, and there was a rapport there not unlike the one he’d built with Jeonghan. Jisoo understood things without being told, had seen the relationship between him and Jeonghan back on the first day he’d worked with her, the day he’d finally done it. Or maybe Jeonghan had told her before. It was a bit of a strange thing, to have this mutual friend between them. Seungcheol would probably never know what exactly Jeonghan had told her.

Seungcheol eventually came to realize that there were more things, more people, in his life than Yoon Jeonghan, supermodel. He had other photographer friends, like Seo Myungho, who always made a point of looking for Seungcheol if they were both in town at the same time. Choi Seungcheol was his own person, even without Yoon Jeonghan. They still saw each other, sometimes. Backstage at fashion shows. If they were at the same studio at the same time. They even worked together, sometimes, but there was never an unnecessary word between them when they did. Jeonghan and Jisoo were close; more than once Seungcheol had gone looking for her and found her with Jeonghan, and quickly removed himself from the situation. 

They didn’t really intend to avoid each other. It just happened. It hurt less, then. There was no need to look at each other and see the past, see that last conversation in Jeonghan’s apartment replay over and over in his head. He knew what had happened. He didn’t need a play-by-play.

(Parallel lines ran on the same path but never met. They were doomed to stay apart. But perpendicular lines crossed once and then continue on. They were doomed to briefness. Maybe it was better like that. Perpendicular lines never had to see each other again.)

Seungcheol didn’t quite get over it. It wasn’t that easy. Jeonghan truly was that mess of lasagna. He was _everywhere_ in Seungcheol’s apartment, Seungcheol’s life; Jeonghan might have given Seungcheol’s clothes back, but Seungcheol never gave Jeonghan his. They still carried the smell of Jeonghan’s laundry detergent. He couldn’t bear to get rid of that.

He still had Jeonghan’s fancy model shampoo in his bathroom, taking up space. Jeonghan’s toothbrush still sat in its dolphin toothbrush holder, stuck to the corner of his mirror. Every once in awhile, the recommendations from the movies Jeonghan had liked popped up in his Netflix feed. When he went through his kitchen cupboards, he invariably found some sort of diet food that could only belong to Jeonghan, whether it was salads or diet shakes or avocado juice.

Seungcheol had a whole folder on his phone dedicated to crappy phone camera photos of Jeonghan, candids, shot while Jeonghan was asleep or laughing or relaxed. It felt like he was a romcom character going through a breakup. That analogy wouldn’t be too far off.

He saw Jeonghan even when he tried to avoid him. He saw Jeonghan in the silhouette of a man on the other side of the street and his traitor heart still clawed its way to his throat every time, even when it was inevitably not Jeonghan. He saw Jeonghan on a TV in the window of a store once giving an interview and came to a dead stop on the sidewalk (a cardinal sin for big city pedestrians) and even though he couldn’t hear the words, he read the subtitles.

“I’m only human,” Jeonghan had said, laughing lightly in response to the interviewer’s question about the nickname Angel. “I’m no angel.”

“Lord, do I know it,” Seungcheol had said to himself, that long-ago night flashing in front of his eyes again, and then continued walking.

(Jeonghan’s interview answers were always, always pre-rehearsed. If those words had been said to Seungcheol, too, what did that mean?)

He saw Jeonghan kiss a girl backstage, once, at a fashion show, all height and careful aggression, those eyes that had once been laser-focused on him now finding new prey. He couldn’t have suppressed his reaction even if he had tried.

(All he could think was what he would say to Jeonghan if he had the chance, if the other man had turned and seen him, standing there like a deer in headlights, like his heart had just fallen out his empty chest and was still beating frantically on the floor. _I wanted to take a photo and hang it on my wall above my computer so I see it every day, so I would remember not to make the mistake of looking at you again. I’ve never felt like that, like all the air had been sucked out of me no matter where I went. I looked away and I couldn’t breathe. I left and I couldn’t breathe. I lay on my bed that night and all I could see was you kissing that girl against the wall outside the show, and all I could think was,_ you don’t love me. _And maybe you never did.)_

But it got better. He got older, and so did Jeonghan. His career rose to greater heights, and Seungcheol had more and more to occupy himself with. He filled his schedule until it squeezed Jeonghan right out of his life, until he was able to move out of his crappy apartment and finally leave Jeonghan behind. No more hearing the ghost of Jeonghan’s laughter at three am in the morning when he was coming back from the bathroom. No more thinking he could smell Jeonghan’s cologne or laundry detergent. No more mistaking his neighbours’ footsteps in the hallway for Jeonghan.

He erased all of it, and he moved on.

(Maybe one day, all this would just be an embarrassing journal entry. Maybe he would be able to finally believe in the songs he’d been listening to, the sweet voices of Girls’ Generation crooning about how it was a ‘really, really good goodbye’, how it had all been inevitable. Maybe he could leave this world’s unending sadness and sorrow behind.)

Nothing gold can stay, Jeonghan had once said, and they hadn’t even been gold. They’d been silver, bronze, copper, tin, increasing levels of worthless. Never perfect, always flawed.

Without Jeonghan, his horizons felt so open, like he could suddenly do anything, be anyone. But all that openness was terrifying. For a long time, Choi Seungcheol hadn’t known how to define himself without Jeonghan. He still didn’t know how to define himself. But he was learning.

Like Jihoon had once said, there were better people to do. And the population of Itaewon’s gay bars was certainly not closeted to the point of denial.

* * *

Years and years later, when Seungcheol was in his thirties and lived in a constant state of forgetting to shave due to all the flights he caught and the late nights he kept (he was the jetset type now), he sat down for an interview with Vogue Korea in a snazzy lounge at the airport.

(He was booked for a lush, tropical location shoot by, incidentally, Vogue Korea, with Jisoo. It would be work, technically, but he could squeeze some vacation out of it.)

The interviewer, a young lady who dressed a little like Jisoo (that same skirt, those same shoulder-exposing shirts, but much more practical heels), sent the usual softball questions his way. What his process was like. Where he got inspiration from (he could actually pick editorial themes now with much less oversight). The themes and ideas he found himself coming back to time after time. And then, unexpectedly, near the end; “I heard you and model Yoon Jeonghan went to the same university and graduated in the same year. Were you and Jeonghan particularly close?”

The breath was knocked out of him for a moment, ( _soju gone flat a car’s leather interior Jeonghan’s silk sheets that stack of romcoms fried octopus at midnight dirty bathroom tiles)_ but Seungcheol took it as an opportunity to pretend he was thinking about it, as if he was trying to remember an old classmate.

“...no.”

“And are you two close now?”

“...no.”

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are lovely and appreciated! my tumblr is [@colourofinfinity!](http://colourofinfinity.tumblr.com/) come find me and vent about svt feels
> 
> (also: a jeonghan companion fic is totally in the works.)
> 
> This story is part of **[the LLF comment project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject),** whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. 
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> This author invites:
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